Winds of Sadness
by Hitokiri Gentatsu
Summary: A Kenshin-Tomoe Songfic. Hope you enjoy reading it.


Winds of Sadness

By: Hitokiri Gentatsu

Author's note: This is a songfic to a Celtic song called "Lament". This is my first attempt at one for Rurouni Kenshin so I hope you like it. I don't own the song or the characters.

"For a long time I believed in my heart that it didn't matter whether I lived or died."

Himura Kenshin

Episode 50

In skies of frozen snow

A young samurai knelt in the snow, blood staining the ground around him and dripping from his many wounds. He cradled a young woman in his arms, her white kimono stained red from her blood. He watched her life fade from her eyes, words she had never spoken to him reflected in their fading gaze. He watched her body draw its final breath. The samurai's face ran with tears, which fell from his purple eyes, mingling with the blood dripping from a wound on his cheek: her last gift to him. He whispered one word: "Tomoe" and folded the woman into his arms, his head resting on hers. 

"Tomoe why is it better this way? Why?"

Where winds of sadness roam

The wind blew around them and the snow continued to fall, covering the bloodstained ground until it was pristine white again. Still the samurai knelt there, unable to move from the spot where is beloved had died. His heart was breaking into pieces, the world around him once more leading him from life back to death, from light back to the shadows and from living to merely existing.

"I was the one who should have died, not you."

Red sun's burning low

The sun stung his eyes as the samurai carried his beloved back to their home. He locked himself away from the world, alone with her and his memories of their brief happiness. He mourned in the silence that had become heavy with his regrets and loneliness. He now understood the pain she had lived with for now it had become his own. Her's was now over but his was just beginning. She had saved his life at the cost of her own. He couldn't fathom why she had cared so much for him that she would trade her life for his. He was nothing. He was only a hitokiri whose hands were stained with the blood of many. A hitokiri who had always expected to die young.

"I don't deserve to live but you did. My life is of no consequence."

You were my home, where I would go

She had been his focus, his one true happiness. The one who had given his life meaning again. While they had made a temporary home in Otsu, she had made the demons of the past disappear and had turned his thoughts from death back to life. She was his sheath, his anchor in a world of chaos and now that anchor was gone. He had nothing to hold him in place, no one to turn him from his dark path. He was alone again. Painfully alone and nothing could change that fact. 

"I have lost you..."

In green fields now unknown

He looked at the food they had worked so hard to harvest and grow together. He saw her carefully tending to the young plants and mourning when the rain nearly destroyed their hard work. He watched her working with him in the field and saw the life that he had created with the hands that had created only death before. His heart had known peace and happiness at that moment but now there was only coldness and emptiness in his numb heart. He looked at those hands and knew that they would always be nothing more than a killer's hands, bringing nothing but sorrow and pain to whatever they touched. How could he have ever believed otherwise? He knew that this peaceful life had been nothing more than a dream, something he was never meant to have or know. He looked down at her and knew only the sorrow of loneliness.

"I was never meant to have happiness. I must now and forever be alone."

Your name upon the standing stone

He saw again the field of crosses where his current life had begun and the stones that marked the graves of the three young women who had looked after him as a boy in that other life where he went by another name and people he had failed to have the strength to protect. Now there was an additional cross there with a scarf draped around it. Her scarf. The death he had foreseen was not his own but hers. She was lost to him now and she had taken his happiness with her to her grave. He had failed to protect her just as he had failed the other three only this time his heart was wounded more deeply.

"I will continue to live with my broken heart..."

Love invites one last call

Her love had flowed over him like a calm river, piercing the veil of shadow within his heart. She had brought the light back into his life, illuminating his true self that had been hidden away during his time as a hitokiri and that 'new man' would not disappear. She gave her love to him, the one who had caused her unhappiness, giving him the will to live again in the light. She had drawn him from the shadows he had sank into, calling him back to the light with her soft voice. He would live on for her, although he didn't deserve the second chance she had granted him. His life held no meaning for him now because she was not there to share it.

"I will find a way to atone for the evils I have committed and I must live in order to do that."

When death from life begins to fall

The young samurai knew he would have to return to the battlefield soon. There was no hope for that and his beloved had known and accepted that. His sword had slain her but he knew in his heart that she understood and forgave him for that too. Now he would return to that life she had turned him from but he would not become a mindless and heartless killer again. She was still his sheath and would remain so even though she died. He would never attack another soul again. From now on he would only fight to protect others and to defend them or himself. He would think before he acted, before the hitokiri's rage could take control. And after that...

"I will lend my sword to your cause but after the battles have been won...I will never kill again, never again."

All my tears now unfold

His last tears fell from tired purple eyes as he looked down at her peaceful face one last time before he left. He was leaving soon to return to Kyoto and he wanted to memorize her face one last time before leaving. He was returning to the war that had already claimed so many lives including her own. He touched his scarred cheek, forever a reminder of the ones whose lives and happiness he had destroyed, and dried his last tears. He pick up his sword, tears still in his eyes and left, setting fire to the house that had once been their home so that her spirit might be freed. He carried her with him in memory so that he could hold onto the light within his heart as he reentered the shadows again.

"Tomoe...I must go..."

How can I now alone grow old

Alone the young samurai walked down the road back to his former life, his eyes hovering between purple and amber. From now on he would stand alone. He had no one and nothing except the cause he had embraced. Because of who he was he would be sure to remain alone so as not to put anyone else in danger. He alone would fight for the happiness of others even though he no longer felt he deserved such happiness for himself. He would fight his battles alone, within a group yet not part of it. That was the only way to protect them from what he was.

"...say that you don't know me...from now on this battle is mine alone."

Dusty stars shed their lights

The stars above him twinkled, casting a faint light around him but he took no notice of them. His mind was already turning from the light back to the shadow. His mind was occupied with the tasks ahead of him. Protect the Ishinshishi with his sword. Return the peace to the land and then find his own peace by making amends for all the sins he committed here in the name of justice.

"If you were with me...I will become a new man"

When death from life, slips silently to the night

Silently he slipped passed the gates of Kyoto and down her alleyways, his amber gaze alert for danger and for enemies. He had returned at last. He closed off all emotions, for they were a danger to his job, becoming his other self: Hitokiri Battousai. This was the only way he could survive the chaos of the war so that he could make amends to her and to those others who had and would die by his sword. For that the hitokiri must live but after it was all over, he would be locked away from the world, never to be seen again. He would vanish into the realm of legend and rumor and never rise again. He would have no place in a peaceful era and so he would die so that Himura Kenshin could keep his promise.

"I'm going in search of a path where I can protect those living in the new age without slaying men..."


End file.
